Thousands of mourners are expected at the funeral on Monday of Michael Brown, the African American teenager whose death at the hands of a white police officer set off days of confrontation on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.

Brown’s father, also Michael, appealed at a peace rally on Sunday for a suspension of protests to show proper respect to his son during the burial at a St Louis baptist church.

“All I want is peace while my son is being laid to rest,” he said. “Can you please, please, take a day of silence so we can lay our son to rest? Please. It’s all I ask.”

The violent nightly showdowns between protesters demanding the arrest of the police officer, Darren Wilson, who shot the unarmed 18-year-old six times, have given way to more organised and orderly demonstrations. But anger over the racially-charged killing remains intense.

Brown’s father was joined on stage at the rally by relatives of other young African American men killed in shootings who shared experiences of their struggle for justice while coping with the loss.

They included the parents of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager shot by a neighbourhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, in Florida two years ago.

“Michael Brown had a right to live,” Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, told the rally. “He had a right to see another birthday. He had a right just like anyone else to walk down the street.”

Martin’s father, Tracy, spoke about broader lessons from the killings such as the importance of education, and the need for fathers to “take back our neighbourhoods” and to teach their children “how to walk and talk in public”.

“We don’t want to give them no reason to assassinate our children,” he said.

Tracy Martin also urged African Americans to vote in “order to make a change in our communities”.

Zimmerman was acquitted of second degree murder after claiming self-defence.

Joining them was Cephus Johnson, the uncle of Oscar Grant, an unarmed teenager who was shot in the back while lying face down on the ground by a white transit police officer in Oakland, California, in 2009. The officer, Johannes Mehserle, said he thought he was firing a Taser, not a gun. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and served less than two years in prison. The shooting was the subject of last year’s film Fruitvale Station.

St Louis has divided over Brown’s killing, with many in Ferguson, where he was shot, remaining highly sceptical that the authorities are intent on pursuing justice.

Witnesses have described Brown as raising his hands before he was shot six times, including in the head. The police then left his body lying in the street for four hours, further angering residents who said it showed their lack of respect for African Americans.

Members of the black caucus in the Missouri state legislature met the governor, Jay Nixon, on Sunday to press him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Brown’s death in place of the St Louis county prosecutor, Robert McCulloch. McCulloch commands little confidence among African Americans because of close family ties to the police.

Nixon told the St Louis Post-Dispatch after the meeting he would not replace McCulloch, who is presenting evidence to a grand jury which will decide whether to indict Wilson for unlawfully killing Brown. Earlier, the governor said that it was possible Wilson would not be charged by the grand jury.

Wilson has vocal supporters in St Louis, mostly among white people. Organisers of a fund to support the officer say it has raised more than $400,000.

Several thousand people are expected to attend Brown’s funeral at the Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church. Barack Obama is sending three officials, including Marlon Marshall, a St Louis native who attended high school with Brown’s mother. The delegation will be led by Broderick Johnson, the chairman of an Obama initiative, My Brother’s Keeper, to help young minorities.

Among those scheduled to speak is the civil rights activist Al Sharpton, who on Sunday joined the appeal for a day of calm.

“We don’t want anything tomorrow to happen that would defile the name of Michael Brown,” he said. “This is not about our rage tomorrow. It’s about the legacy and memory of his son, and the mother’s son and their families.”

Earlier Sharpton told NBC’s Meet the Press he intended to use the funeral oration to call for Brown’s death to mark a turning point.

“I think that what we can say is that we must turn this moment into a movement to really deal with the underlying issues of police accountability and what is and is not allowable by police, and what citizens ought to be moving toward,” he said. “I think that we need to deal with how we move toward solutions, how we deal with the whole aggressive policing of what is considered low-level crimes.”

William Lacy Clay, a Democrat who represents Ferguson in Congress, echoed Sharpton’s call.

“There needs to be a frank discussion about how we change the way the African American community is policed,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “These people were sworn to serve and protect. And apparently that is not happening here. And so we have to change that dynamic.”

Obama has ordered a review of the federal program that funnels military weaponry to police departments, some of it surplus equipment from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The attorney general, Eric Holder, who visited Ferguson on Saturday to highlight a parallel federal investigation into Brown’s death, questioned how that equipment was being used.

“This equipment flowed to local police forces because they were increasingly being asked to assist in counter-terrorism. But displays of force in response to mostly peaceful demonstrations can be counter-productive. It makes sense to take a look at whether military-style equipment is being acquired for the right purposes and whether there is proper training on when and how to deploy it,” he said.

Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri, triggered nights of violent protests, criticism of police tactics and racial upheaval. But in Rio, Brazil's second largest city, 15-year-old Lucas Lima was another statistic